


The King's Horses and the King's Men

by failsafe



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 19:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11835522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Where does she go to get put back together again?





	The King's Horses and the King's Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bazylia_de_Grean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/gifts).



> Obviously, the title is a reference to the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, but this isn't a story about nursery rhymes. I really hope you enjoy this story. I guess because I have restarted the game so many times, I am pretty attached to Goodsprings, and because they are their own faction I thought that'd be a good opportunity to write a fic about a courier who is sort of already over this Legion and NCR business. I hope you enjoy your fic!

_Prospector Saloon – Sometime When It's (Finally) Getting Dark_

The fact that she ends up back at this place swings back and forth like a worn out pendulum between thoughts that slip around the edges of her fading sobriety. Trudy gives her another drink but only hands it over when she manages to glance up to meet her eyes. A tight, obligated smile thanks the woman for the liquor, and she lets it burn down her throat in silence.

This time of day, a lot of people are finding beds to sleep in, here in Goodsprings. She finds it funny that there are some people who have their own while others seem to drift from open door to open door, taking shelter as desert air tries to get cool at night. She wonders if she'll go bed down somewhere in town, or if she'll stay here until Trudy kicks her out, or if she'll finally make her way back up the hill, the way she had come out of certain death, to the destination that had brought her back to Goodsprings _this_ time.

Another swallow and she is out of alcohol again.

Behind her, the back door opens. Even a good ways toward drunk, she can feel her muscles tense, her body respond, ready for a fight. She exhales easily when she realizes that the dog that bounds inside isn't baying for blood. The big shepherd doesn't even seem wary as she walks through the doorway and into the long span beyond the bar. Instead of sniffing, being on guard, baying for blood, Cheyenne playfully turns and bows to Sunny, barking just once before leading the way toward the pool tables.

“She's hungry, too,” Sunny explains, but then she notices the lack of anything but a couple of empty glasses in front of the courier from out of town. She just raises her eyebrows a little and smiles a crooked, tight smile. “Probably thirsty, too,” she adds, somewhere between a little judgmental and apologetic.

Rich for someone who seems to live at a bar, but what are the alternatives?

Actually, this courier has seen a lot of the alternatives.

“Come on, Cheyenne, let's go get you fed. Away from the people,” she says in a bright tone that seems a little excessive to the ringing in the courier's ears.

“You having another one?” Trudy asks when the young woman and the dog have cleared out around toward the pool tables. In the far corner is where Cheyenne will find her supper.

“No thanks,” the courier says, glancing at the emptied glasses and finding herself no longer thirsty.

“Want me to find you something to put on your stomach with your liquor?” she presses mildly.

“Nah, I killed a gecko, earlier,” the courier says, not sure if it's a dry comment or not. Either way, it's a lie.

“Where are you going tonight?” Trudy asks. It is a friendly question, but it's one with an end-game. The courier hates how she's learning to recognize when people are doing that. There had been a time when her job had been simple enough that she didn't have to. “Got a place to sleep?”

The courier takes a moment to look at Trudy a little longer than she should have before she answers. She bristles when she's rushed, told what to do, threatened. She knows that Trudy means no harm by it, but there is a swimming filter around her perception now, not to mention the dull, occasionally throbbing ache deep in her skull.

“Maybe,” the courier replies. That part, at least, is honest.

“Well, if you can find a blanket lying around, afraid all I've got's the pool table as an extra place to sleep, but if you can't find a bed – least I can do. All you've done for this place.”

“Yeah,” the courier responds to the offer with a polite enough nod. She can tell that it's a polite request for her to do one of two things: go ahead and pass out or go ahead and get out. She stands and grabs the soft, worn fabric of the pack she has been carrying around lately. She clutches it in her hand, the softness of the fabric, a few threads fraying, seeming to anchor her balance. “I'll see you later.”

She tries not to stumble or lose her steadiness as she takes the back door out, too. It's closer, less time for Trudy to scrutinize whether or not she's sober enough to leave. She doesn't think she would be stopped anyway. After all, what could the poor, good people of Goodsprings do if the stranger who'd helped them out once, in a dizzying rush immediately after coming back from the dead, wandered out and was accosted, robbed, killed, or worse, right on their doorstep?

The night air is definitely cooler than when the courier had finally come to the door at the end of a long day's walk. She can't quite place what brings her back to Goodsprings over and over. She has some idea, though. Maybe it's that they have their own priorities, their own community, their own worries, a little outpost of civilization out here on the edge of things. Here, they don't talk about the Legion unless someone asks. Here, they don't talk about the NCR unless someone asks. Here, they talk about Goodsprings.

Taking a deep breath of a solitary breeze that whips past her face, the courier tries to orient herself. Really, she shouldn't do the chem thing like this. She absolutely hates when this happens. But she wasn't cut out for building this kind of reputation, for fighting trained soldiers dressed in Roman garb, for dealing with bandits without anyone to check in with in the end. She had been a courier, she'd been good at it, knowing when to talk, smile, pay for passage, when to threaten, but this was something new. Something exhausting.

Before she just decides to sleep in the Saloon's yard, she starts the short, steep trek up the hill.

She hopes she doesn't scare the old man, knocking loudly on his door just after night has fallen.

“Doc?” she calls, in case he will recognize her voice. Only, she doesn't recognize the little crack in it.

For a few seconds there is silence. Then there is a light that comes on inside. On the tipsy, dizzy surface of her mind, she can remember the layout of the house before the door opens. Then it does, a little light burning in Doc Mitchell's hand, below his face, illuminating it with that eerie red that comes with being lit from below.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, nodding for the courier to come inside. “I see your face is holding together pretty well,” he adds, as if this is a warm, friendly greeting. From him, it is, somehow. “What about the rest of you?”

She finds that she is already inside, headed toward the living room and its couch, before she gets the chance to answer.

Just before she sits down, Doc Mitchell touches the back of her arm and guides her to the place she had awakened the first time, his work station. It must be obvious, then.

“I don't know. Can't complain,” she says, as if she is reading from a script.

Doc's calloused, gentle fingertips feel behind her ear as she sits on the edge of the cot he has led her to. He feels her pulse manually in this way, then starts to look through his tools.

“Y'wouldn't be visiting me if there wasn't something I could do for you,” he says in his familiar drawl. It's only familiar because everything is fuzzy from _before_ – or maybe it's all fuzzy, with alcohol and chems in her blood.

“... The Legion is trying to kill me. The NCR wants me to do their errands for them,” she explains, words a little slurred as Doc checks her pulse with a stethoscope this time. Then, he is looking at her hands, front and back. His eyes linger on her forearms and she knows he's not stupid, knows what he's looking at – the fresh bruises and marks from the use of needles, among the other cuts and bruises that come from life trekking out across the Mojave.

“You look like you might be doing a pretty good job yourself,” Doc comments, a little disapproving but not unkind in his tone.

“With which part?” the courier asks, knowing the answer before she asks the question.

“Killing yourself,” he replies, indulging her.

This isn't the first time she has come back to him – the only real doctor she knows. The man who had saved her life when he had, maybe, had no real reason to. When he'd done it, he certainly wouldn't have known what everyone would suddenly start expecting from her.

“Maybe I just wanted to see a familiar face,” she says.

“I gave you a look-see before I let you out of here the first time. You've healed up so well, it'd be against my salt as a doctor to fix anything we missed for yer vanity's sake,” Doc replies, and she can feel herself almost ready to sleep in his workspace. Just hearing him talk – nothing about the Legion, nothing about the NCR, nothing about territory, nothing about bandits, and nothing about the man who'd stolen her life from her, whether he'd killed her or not – she can nearly sleep. “... So you wanted to see me, so you cooked up a nice chem-dependency for yourself.”

“A what?” she asks, focus swimming back up top.

“I smell it on your breath, see it in your arms,” Doc reminds her. “No need to lie to me, I don't need fancy equipment to see it.”

The courier looks down at the floor and offers him a half-shrug.

“Can you do something for it?” she asks.

“Yeah, if you can stay a day or two.”

“Nowhere else to go,” she promises herself, more than him.

“You sure about that?”

“At least no one will come looking for me here. Why do you think I waited 'til it was dark?” the courier points out, proving that she can still think clearly.

“You know what you're doing is boneheaded?” Doc asks, nodding down and brushing his thumb against a healed mark on her arm.

“I didn't have a choice. They chased me for a day.”

“Who?”

“The Legion's assassins, I guess,” she says.

Doc sighs and sits back on his stool, reaching up and rubbing at his forehead.

“You make friends easy,” he says.

“Yeah, I know,” she replies, as if to sarcasm.

“But you do,” he says, making it clearer to her what he means.

She stares at him for a moment, then offers another half-shrug.

“You put me back together,” she says, not sure whether she means before or right now. “Least I can do.”

 


End file.
